Business Social Responsibility: Essence, Development Trends and Current Problems

Abstract

The article presents a definition of the category “social responsibility” based on generalization of different views and system approach. Social responsibility is referred to as a multilevel system of economic, social, legal, ethical relations between all actors of economic activity and those interested in its results, aimed at a final beneficial result for them. The authors emphasize that social responsibility of business is one of the main factors increasing its business reputation, improving its image and creating competitive advantages. Motivation criteria of the domestic system of corporate social responsibility (social, political and economic) are considered. The authors identify factors that have a negative impact on the formation of the social responsibility of Ukrainian business and create a number of problems on the way of implementation of the social responsibility policy. To solve the problems of introducing social responsibility at Ukrainian enterprises a number of measures are proposed. The latter include professional selection of senior managers by competent independent experts; establishment of normative and moral guarantees of the stability of senior managers’ successful management activities; public control over managers’ activities; improvement of corporate legislation with establishing more rigorous public control over the activities of strategically important joint stock companies; transition from the model of conflict partnership to constructive partnership in labour relations; construction of a system of permanent public monitoring of large corporate entrepreneurship.